Short stories & travel reports from a life spent living, working and exploring the globe.

Scotland

I was nineteen years old when my dad got a new job in Edinburgh and our family left the leafy English county of Buckinghamshire where I’d lived my entire life. It was 1997 and initially we were based in a tiny hamlet outside the town of Haddington. But over the next four years I found myself an enthusiastic, albeit bemused member of The Thomas Family Scotland Roadshow as we shuttled all over the country for my dad’s various postings. During this time I stacked shelves in a supermarket, got a job with The Employment Service as a back-to-work advisor and rented out bicycles from a rickety shed in a caravan park.

Although I left Scotland in 2001 to kick off my world travels, I would always go back between contracts to see friends in Edinburgh, catch up with my parents in The Borders and see my sister up in Fort William. For more on my Scotland days, check out my articles on: